Using Historical Thinking Skills: Westward Expansion

This lesson introduces students to using historical thinking skills to analyze historical documents. It includes three activities that ask students to source, contextualize, and corroborate documents about westward expansion. Each activity also provides students with an opportunity to engage in lateral reading about an internet source related to the historical topic addressed by the primary source.

Note: There are four Using Historical Thinking Skills lessons. All of these lessons introduce students to sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration and follow a similar format but feature documents on different time periods: The American Revolution, Westward Expansion, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era.

[Overview and activities updated on 6/19/2026.]